


Soul of Stone

by Kitty September (KittyAug)



Series: Kitty's SPN Femslash Bingo [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Crusades, Demons, F/F, Historic Setting, Middle East, Pre-Canon, SPN Femslash Bingo, SPN Femslash Network, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4920322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyAug/pseuds/Kitty%20September
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yakut is born in 1135, not too far from the County of Edessa. With a Hebrew name indelibly marked on her wrist. It is not uncommon, but for Yakut it turns out to be far more complicated.</p><hr/><p><a href="http://kittyaugust.tumblr.com/post/129901548641/kitty-spnbingo">SPN Femslash Bingo</a>: Soulmate AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul of Stone

Yakut is born in 1135, not too far from the occupied territory now called the County of Edessa. She is born with a Hebrew name indelibly marked on her wrist. The last Holy Crusade is a grandmother's memory but the Christians still come across the sea on smaller raids and, honestly, it isn’t that uncommon although English and French are more so. It is her father who cries for it. Her mother, always more pragmatic, comforts him and points out that she’ll be safer. The invaders are less likely to steal girls with visible soulmarks, especially not ones in non-Persian scripts. He argues that it probably looks the same to the Invaders. And she doesn’t have an argument for that.

When Yakut is 10, Edessa falls to the the forces of Zengi. This seems worth celebrating, at first. That is until the Christians retaliate. The Second Crusade starts and the East prepares for war. It is not yet to their doorstep but close enough. Close enough that the Ra’is comes around recruiting. And Yakut is not surprised when her brother goes with him one week. It is her mother who cries this time.

The word is still on her skin, dark and undeniably true: לילית - Yakut thinks it is beautiful even if it does make her father sad. She sees her parents together, sees the joy they have in each other and the way their marks seem to glow when they share space, his on his neck proud for all to see and mother’s on ankle a secret at home thing.

In 1148 Yakut is 13 and the war rages on. Lisbon has fallen and the Christians approach Jerusalem, but skirt their village by luck or providence. News travels slower as war takes the roads. No one knows what will happen, which stories are true and which are lies. So many mothers cry for want of knowing. Yakut feels it, feels the fear in the air and their bones. But she braves it.

Yakut has still not met anyone who makes her heart sing and her skin glow. Traders have come and gone, but no Jewish man has swept her off her feet and now that the war reaches its peak the traders have stopped coming. She is pragmatic about this. There is another girl in the village with a French name on her shoulder, and she waxes lyrical about the Crusaders. She waits for them to find their village, expectant and hopeful. Yakut wonders if that girl with her illegible word on her skin really understands what war is. Yakut is well educated, she reads even when there isn’t much to read. And she talks to the traders and the travelers, in part hopeful of finding the mysterious לילית but mostly hopeful of information and knowledge.

1149, Yakut turns 14 and the Crusaders retreat. Her brother comes home, he is missing an eye but otherwise whole. He brings a bride with him, a small wisp of a thing who trained in fine arts and languages in Constantinople but followed a word on her flesh all the way here, to nowhere. To a village far enough off the main roads that the Crusaders missed it twice. Yakut likes her, at first.

It is weeks later that the older girl catches Yakut’s hand while they are washing clothes by the stream. She grabs it and tugs Yakut towards her.

“Do you know what this says,” her brother’s bride asks her.

Yakut just shakes her head, no she doesn't know. She knows what it is, but not what it says.

“Don’t find out,” the bride warns her and shoves her away, hard. Yakut seathes but doesn’t fight back. It wouldn’t be seemly.

It is 1153 when the demon comes to town. Yakut doesn’t know who summoned it or why, but she suspects the girl with the French name on her back and no Crusader on her arm.

He is a handsome man with rich clothing and big promises. Yakut’s father is sick, dying. It is his time, he tells them. And when the demon asks her “What do you want little Ruby?” she thinks about her father’s life.

“Knowledge,” is what she says instead. “I want to know things, I want to learn. I want to go to the university at Edessa, I want to see the sea and read the Greek epics. I want to learn.”

“Knowledge is within my power to grant, and the price is small.”

The price of knowledge is never small. After all it was knowledge that took Adam and Eve from Paradise.

“And I want to know what this is.” Yakut shows the man her writ and waits. She has waited a long time for this answer, her whole life in fact.

“Lilith,” the demon says in awe. He takes a step back, like she a little girl in the desert might harm him. She likes it.

“Lilith?” Yakut repeats the foreign word. The strange syllables should feel out of place on her tongue, but they don’t, they fit. The fall from her lips perfectly formed like a song.

Then something happens at last, a song in her blood. Her skin tingles, so hot it might burn. The demon falls to his knees in supplication. For a moment she thinks it is to her, and maybe it is too, if they are truly one soul. She spins on her heel.

At first Yakut frowns. Because that isn’t someone new, it is the girl with French words. But then the girl opens her eyes and they are pure white and Yakut knows. She just knows, that whatever is inside that girl now it is not that wayward child with dreams of an armoured Frenchman.

“Lilith,” she says it, a statement not a question. Because her soul knows this woman, this demon, this creature before her. And it sings.

“Yes.” Lilith smiles.

She walks right up and takes Yakut’s face in her hands, hands rough from work. But her lips are still soft. It is a kiss and a promise a bargain struck. And right then Yakut doesn’t care what the cost or what the gift, she has her לילית before her and she will never fear Christian steel again.

Yakut, like Lilith, never changes her name. It is meant to be a demonic right of passage but she doesn't need it - she has Lilith. Even decades and centuries later when her soul has long twisted into pure black smoke, she's still her, still loyal, still bound at the deeper than bone level of her soul. She's still Lilith's. She just translates it into whatever tongue she uses. Most places have a word for a Ruby after all - a precious stone and the colour of blood. It suits her, Lilith says, beautiful and precious, and made of life and death all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't guess from the text, Yakut is Turkish for Ruby.
> 
> I kept the historical stuff pretty vague, both because I think it would become vague in Ruby's memory and because 6th Form History was a loooong time ago and I didn't want to get trapped in a wikipedia spiral! Hopefully there isn't anything to upsettingly glaring and the actual classists and historians in the audience will forgive me.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Comments and kudos keep the fandom spinning!
> 
> Also, I has a tumblr - [kittyaugust.tumblr.com](http://kittyaugust.tumblr.com/post/129901548641/kitty-spnbingo). I'm nice and I take prompts.


End file.
